M. Schioppa

Recent results and performance of the multi-gap resistive plate chambers network for the EEE Project

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project is devoted to the study of Extensive Atmospheric Showers through a network of muon telescopes, installed in High Schools, with the further aim of introducing young students to particle and astroparticle physics. Each telescope is a tracking detector composed of three Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC) with an active area of 1.60 × 0.80m2. Their characteristics are similar to the ones built for the Time Of Flight array of the ALICE Experimentat LHC. The EEE Project started with a few pilot towns, where the telescopes have been taking data since 2008, and it has been constantly extended, reaching at present more than 50 MRPCs telescopes. They are spread across Italy with two additional stations at CERN, covering an area of around 3 × 105 km2, with a total surface area for all the MRPCs of 190m2. A comprehensive description of the MRPCs network is reported here: efficiency, time and spatial resolution measured using cosmic rays hitting the telescopes. The most recent results on the detector and physics performance from a series of coordinated data acquisition periods are also presented.

The EEE Project: a sparse array of telescopes for the measurement of cosmic ray muons

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) Project is meant to be the most extensive experiment to detect secondary cosmic particles in Italy. To this aim, more than 50 telescopes have been built at CERN and installed in high schools distributed all over the Italian territory. Each EEE telescope comprises three large area Multigap Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPCs) and is capable of reconstructing the trajectories of the charged particles traversing it with a good angular resolution. The excellent performance of the EEE telescopes allows a large variety of studies, from measuring the local muon flux in a single telescope, to detecting extensive air showers producing time correlations in the same metropolitan area, to searching for large-scale correlations between showers detected in telescopes tens, hundreds or thousands of kilometers apart. In addition to its scientific goal, the EEE Project also has an educational and outreach objective, its aim being to motivate young people by involving them directly in a real experiment. High school students and teachers are involved in the construction, testing and start-up of the EEE telescope in their school, then in its maintenance and data-acquisition, and later in the analysis of the data. During the last couple of years a great boost has been given to the EEE Project through the organization of simultaneous and centralized data taking with the whole telescope array. The raw data from all telescopes are transferred to CNAF (Bologna), where they are reconstructed and stored. The data are currently being analyzed, looking at various topics: variation of the rate of cosmic muons with time, upward going muons, muon lifetime, search for anisotropies in the muon angular distribution and for time coincidences between stations. In this paper an overall description of the experiment is given, including the design, construction and performance of the telescopes. The operation of the whole array is also presented by showing the most recent physics results.

EEE - Extreme Energy Events: an astroparticle physics experiment in Italian High Schools

The Extreme Energy Events project (EEE) is aimed to study Extensive Air Showers (EAS) from primary cosmic rays of more than 1018 eV energy detecting the ground secondary muon component using an array of telescopes with high spatial and time resolution. The second goal of the EEE project is to involve High School teachers and students in this advanced research work and to initiate them in scientific culture: to reach both purposes the telescopes are located inside High School buildings and the detector construction, assembling and monitoring - together with data taking and analysis - are done by researchers from scientific institutions in close collaboration with them. At present there are 42 telescopes in just as many High Schools scattered all over Italy, islands included, plus two at CERN and three in INFN units. We report here some preliminary physics results from the first two common data taking periods together with the outreach impact of the project.

Extreme Energy Events Project: construction of the detectors

The Extreme Energy Events (EEE) experiment is a strategic project of Centro Fermi dedicated to the study of extreme energy cosmic rays with an innovative outreach approach: high school students are directly involved in the experiment and play a primary role. EEE exploits a network of muon tracking telescopes constituted by three large area MRPCs. In this work we describe the detector design and the construction phase which is performed at CERN by high school students and teachers. The experiment is coordinated by Centro Fermi with collaboration from INFN, CERN, Ministero dellUniversita e della Ricerca (MIUR). nNowadays

EEE Project - Students from all parts of peninsula collaborate to study cosmic rays

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Looking at the sub-TeV sky with cosmic muons detected in the EEE MRPC telescopes

telescope are installed all over Italy (

A study of upward going particles with the Extreme Energy Events telescopes

3~10^5~km^2

Operation and performance of the EEE network array for the detection of cosmic rays

) and a total of 100 institutes participate monitoring the quality of the data and analysing them. The EEE Project is still expanding to enlarge the network, involving more schools.

First results from Run-1 of the Extreme Energy Events experiment

Project Extreme Energy Events (EEE) – “La scienza nelle scuole” is an experiment dedicated to the study of high energy cosmic radiation, using detectors distributed over an area of more than half a million km2, from Geneva to Lampedusa. Data are taken simultaneously from about 50 telescopes. More than 50 billion particles have been registered up to now. nProject was born in 2004 from an idea of Professor Antonino Zichichi, funded and operated by the Fermi Center in Rome in collaboration with CERN, INFN, and the Ministry of Education, with the aim to involve high school students in a real physics experiment. The Initiative has reached the goal of 100 participating educational institutes, with a support of 10-30 students per school. Half of these already hosts a detector, the others, waiting for a telescope, are involved in data taking and analysis together with twinned schools. nThe participation of students starts with the construction of the detectors at CERN, working with local researchers. After installation into school, they manage and monitor the operation of the telescope during the data taking, and intervene in case of failure. nStudents deepen their knowledge both about particle physics through targeted lessons and in specific areas of data analysis with dedicated Masterclasses. Periodically they attend seminars, open also to the citizens and sometime highlighted in newspapers, and to annual meetings between all schools involved and the Centro Fermi researchers coordinating the project. nSince November 2016, there are monthly videoconferences opened to schools; more than 50 schools are connected simultaneously! In these meetings, students are updated on the latest news of the project and present their activities to the entire collaboration. nIn my presentation, I will examine the different ways of involvement of young people in the project and its impact on education and citizenship.